Thank you for this special honor. I did not want this to be like the Academy Awards but I have been touched in a positive way by so many people in the profession that I must give thanks and recognize those who have supported me, but more important, provided a helping hand in my 41 years of practicing law.

First: The family table. My Dad and Mom; Uncle Art, who flew in from Oakland, Calif.; Uncle Warren and his friend, Sondra; Minnie Jackson, mom’s best friend of 70 years; Michael, my son; my wife, Regina, the love of my life. Also, I would like to recognize my daughter, Tara, brother and sister who could not attend the event but said that I was her hero.

Second: The table with my office and support staff. My partner, Michael DiManna. We have been partners for 35 years. I will not identify each of them, but they know how important each is to my success.

Third: My Sam Cary Bar Association family. This group of extended family members allowed me to be a leader for the first time in the practice of law. In 1971, I was one of the founders of the Sam Cary Bar Association. From that leadership effort, other specialty bars followed: the Women’s Bar in 1976, the Hispanic Bar in 1977, the Asian Pacific Bar Association in 1991 and others. This is a special night for the Sam Cary family: One of our former presidents, Cheryl Rowles-Stokes, was appointed to the Arapahoe County County Court. She is the first African-American woman judge in Arapahoe County.

Thank you to the selection committee members for honoring me with this award.

Congratulations to the 61 previous award recipients. I have received beautiful letters of
welcome to this select group from many of the former recipients. A warm thank-you to Brooke Wunnucke, a recipient in 1999, who is 93 years of age and a role model for me for 40 years, who cannot be here but sent me a lovely letter of congratulations. Brooke and I were deputy District Attorneys together in 1972. Thank you to another mentor, Don and Mary Hoaglund, joint recipients of the award in 2003 and my neighbors on Garfield Street for 20 years.

Thank you to all those who have sent me cards, letters and emails of congratulations. There have been several dozen emails who said that they could not attend but are present in spirit. Lastly, thank you to all who are attending tonight to celebrate my 41 years of practicing law. Thank you to friends of more than 40 years from the Denver D.A.’s office, like Jack and Jackie Rotole, who have bought tables and also to my friends from the American College of Trial Lawyers, ABOTA, CTLA and the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar who are here tonight to celebrate this special night.

My partner, Michael DiManna, and former partner, Neeti Pawar, will be buying a lot drinks at the after party in the bar for these mutual friends. Thank you in advance for paying the tab.

This has been a great journey for me. I would like to talk about some of my memories of the legal landscape of Colorado and how special it has been for me and my family.

Some would say that I entered the practice of law with a bang. I graduated from the University of Colorado of School of Law in 1970. It was an exciting time: The nation was dealing with the Vietnam war; the Black Power Movement was impacting all aspects of life; we were listening to the music of James Brown (I am Black and I am Proud), the Fifth Dimension (The Age of Aquarius) and our local groups, Earth Wind and Fire and Freddi-Henchi; eating lunch at M & D’s with friends and opposing counsel. In the legal arena, the death penalty was declared unconstitutional–Furman vs. Georgia.

In July of 1970 when I was hired by the Denver District Attorney’s Office, I had a 4-inch Afro hairdo, a brand new purple Dodge Challenger with a black racing stripe on the hood and several three piece suits. You guessed it: “The Mod Squad” was my favorite TV show.

The first helping hand that I received in the practice of law came from Denver D.A., Mike McKevitt. He hired me–I was not in the top 10% of my graduating class. Upon hire, there was a photograph of me with several new colleagues in the Rocky Mountain news, with my 4-inch Afro. Some people liked it. Some did not. A Colorado Supreme Court justice commented in an editorial that my appearance did not represent the dignity of the office of District Attorney. I guess he was talking about my hair and not my color; in fact, I was the only Black prosecutor in the state. In rebuttal, my mother wrote the Supreme Court justice a letter praising my abilities. To his credit, he invited Mom and me to lunch and we became friends and I have had the pleasure of representing members of his family.

Mike McKevitt hired me on his staff to prosecute DUI cases in Denver County Court where I met the likes of the great Al Zinn, king of the DUI defense lawyers, Irving Andrews, the great African American lawyer in Colorado for several decades, the Lozow brothers, and Norton Frickey, who became more famous for his production of ads for lawyers than handling traffic cases. By hiring me this was the opportunity that I took to demonstrate that I could do the job.

During my early years as a Deputy D.A., I received a helping hand from many. Judge Zita Weinsheink, the first woman judge in Colorado, Judge Irving Ettenberg, and Judge Orrelle Weeks, the first woman judge on the Denver Juvenile Court bench, each helped me daily with my trial skills, always providing me with constructive comments on how to be a better trial lawyer. I will always appreciate those times after a trial and a verdict when the judge would tell me what I could have done differently or more effectively. But, it was not only me, those judges were giving the same advice to the young public defenders.

Dale Tooley became the D.A. in Denver in 1972. He provided me with the next helping hand by appointing me as one of his chief trial deputies at the ripe age of 27. That was a thrill. At 27 I was prosecuting first degree murder cases against legal legends like Rollie Rogers, Hon. John Kane and Tom May. On the community side, Dale Tooley was my sponsor to be the first black member of the Denver Athletic Club. It is hard to believe now that 40 years ago, the DAC only had white Protestant members. But socially that membership was the opportunity for me to mingle and socialize with the power brokers of the Denver community. Marshall Fogel, the first Jewish member, and I would sit in the steamroom and talk about opportunities available to us.

It was during this same time period, eight black attorneys formed the Sam Cary Bar Association. Kudos to those founders, Hon. Raymond Dean Jones, who rose through the judiciary to the Colorado Court of Appeals; Norman Early who became our Denver District Attorney; Dan Muse, who became our Denver City Attorney; Hon Alfred Harrell, currently, a Denver County Court judge, but nationally known for his spearheading the Inns of Court programs; Phillip Jones, a diplomat in the U.S. State Department for more than 20 years in
countries across the world; and Marilynn Cason, the first African-American lawyer hired on 17th Street with Sherman & Howard in 1969. We were a talented group of lawyers who gave each other a hand and have reached our hands out to many to make a better Bar in Colorado.

Two of the founders, Billy Lewis and King Trimble, have passed, but I know that they are smiling down and saying “Way to go, Gary.”

The next helping hand was in 1974, when U.S. Attorney Jim Treece approached me and offered me a job as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. Once again I was the only person of color on the staff. The best decision that I made was to say yes and to request that I be assigned to work in the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office where I handled the defense of Federal Tort Claims Act Cases, Land Condemnation and EEOC cases. At the age of 29, I was handling multi-million dollar cases defending the U.S. Government in lawsuits and was recognized by U.S. Attorney Edward Levi for my trial work in defending the F.B.I. in a Bivens case. For that case, I received a Special Commendation from the U.S. Attorney General of the United States.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office was the opportunity for me to show that I could try a civil case and perform at a high level in the federal courts.

In 1976, the next helping hand came from a group of young supremely talented lawyers in private practice, Michael DiManna, Spike Eklund and Gene Ciancio. They wanted to have the premier small law firm in Colorado and they wanted me to the fourth partner. After a night of eating steaks, drinking bourbon at one of Glendale’s finest restaurant, the London House, I became a partner in the firm at a guarantee of $800 per month, plus a percentage of the monthly profit. It was 30 years later, when I received an email from the former office manager, congratulating me on this award and she advised me that she was making more money than me at my hire.

Money was not everything. The opportunity to own my own business was more important.

In 1982, the next helping hand came from the Hon. Sherman Finesilver, the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court. He appointed me to be on the Committee on Conduct for the District Court. To the non-lawyers, the Committee on Conduct is the disciplinary agency for lawyers who handle federal cases and are accused of ethical misconduct. By being a member of this committee and eventually chair of the committee, I learned about the disciplinary process for both state and federal lawyers. This experience and educational process has allowed me to create a special niche in my practice over the last 15 years where I have represented dozens of lawyers and judges on alleged misconduct and judicial performance issues.

The source for my success is the helping hands of many people — many of you are in the room. In my career, I have found it important to lend a helping hand to others. I have tried to do it the legal arena as well as in the community.

In 1971 when Sam Cary was formed, there were only 15 black lawyers in Colorado. We came together to create a bar to expand our influence and to help provide opportunities for black lawyers and lawyers of color – not through separation but through inclusiveness. At that time, there was no other specialty bars for lawyers of color or for women. There was one black District Court judge, Judge James Flanigan, and
only one black lawyer on 17th Street. There were no black professors in the law schools. Our mission was to bring together our talent to make a change in the opportunities available to us and to increase the number of black law students going to law school and to increase the number of black attorneys in Colorado.

Because we were only eight in number, much was expected of us. Sam Cary groomed me as a leader. All eight of us were groomed for leadership positions in our various fields of interest. It is my belief that through the creation of the specialty bars, like Sam Cary, these bar associations have helped the Bar Association and the profession in general.

This help is in the form of:
(1) Creating great leaders within the specialty bars who have reached beyond the specialty bars and made an impact on the bar at large;
(2) These leaders raise the level of expectation for themselves and for others with whom they are in contact;
(3) The leadership of diverse individuals who bring people together and enrich lives of others in profoundly deep and personal ways;
(4) Lastly, a helping hand provides opportunities for others.

I know that my life has been enriched by every person with whom I have come into contact in my 41 years of practicing law. In sharing your knowledge and ideas with me, I have grown not just as an attorney, but as a husband, father, son, and human being. Thank you very much for this award and this great party.

Who is that masked man? Oh, it was Zorro, all right, just not Antonio Banderas or one of the other Hollywood heartthrobs who portrayed the master swordsman on the silver screen.
And just as Zorro, alter ego of the fictional nobleman Don Diego de la Vega, was too cunning and foxlike to be caught as he defended “people of the land against tyrannical governors and other villans,” the anonymous local actor (or was it an attorney?) who dressed as Zorro for the ball was very coy about revealing his identity. Read more…

Study after study has shown that when it comes to charitable fundraisers, Denver has more per capita than any comparably sized city in the nation. Joanne Davidson has been covering them for The Denver Post since 1985, coming here from her native California where she'd spent the previous seven years as San Francisco bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report magazine.